Potatoes are traditionally cooked for eating by being baked, boiled, broiled or fried. In "fast food" type restaurants potatoes are usually fried and served in the form of "french fries". As is well known, french fries are potatoes which have been sliced into elongated strips of generally rectangular cross section and deep fried. The primary reason that potatoes are served in the form of french fries at such restaurants is their ease of being eaten by hand feeding. This is because once cooked french fries have a fairly dry, crusty exterior and a size such as to render them to be easily eaten as finger foods accompanying finger food burgers which are commonly consumed at such fast food restaurants.
For many years restaurants have served potatoes almost exclusively in the form of french fries. It has been thought that other forms of cooked potatoes would be inappropriate to prepare and serve in that type of establishment since they would not be suitable for consumption as finger foods. For example, shapes of fries other than the common square strip shape have not been considered appropriate for reasons that include the fact that very small shapes, such as hash browns or nuggets, may not be readily dipped into a sauce, usually catsup or the like, without the patron's fingers contacting the sauce too. Conversely, large sizes such as whole potatoes would have an excessive amount of the relatively soft potato core with respect to an insufficient amount of crust in bites to be appetizing. Thus, for many years now potatoes have normally been served here only in the form of the conventional french fry.
Accordingly, it is seen that were a novel way of preparing and cooking potatoes for consumption as finger foods of new and distinctive sizes and shapes and yet with the taste and texture of traditional french fries preserved, a distinct advance in the art would be achieved. It is to the provision of such therefore that the present invention is primarily directed.